The West Coast Eagles landed the first punch on Saturday night against Sydney, jumping out to an 18-0 lead in the first 10 minutes.
But their dreams of avoiding a historically awful season wouldn't last, with the Swans ramping up the intensity after copping a lengthy quarter-time spray from senior coach Dean Cox.
The Swans would go on to outscore the Eagles 83-9 in a dominant second half, led by Errol Gulden's 36 disposals, two goals and 10 score involvements.
Cox stated post-game his fiery address was merely to pump up the group to get a response after the Eagles showed up with fight, more so highlighting the areas of concern in the first quarter that his side were ultimately able to fix rather than attacking individual efforts.
"One thing I don't want to do is always continually do that [spray] to players," Cox said.
"At times, that's just decisions you make with the expectation that we put on ourselves. When I played, I was on the end of some of them as well, and it wasn't personal, it was collective towards the group and areas we need to improve on.
"Over the whole year I've been really proud of the way, post the Adelaide game, the players have responded. They've challenged against some good teams, some really strong performances, but that doesn't shy away from the start of the season we had.
"That was probably seen in the first quarter and a bit this game, before we could get the way we wanted to get it going."
Cox lamented Sydney's inability to deal with the Eagles stoic first quarter pressure, with West Coast laying 18 tackles in the term and nearly holding Sydney to their second goalless quarter of the season, if it weren't for a major after the siren from Hayden McLean.
"The ability to do the team thing and do team-first acts [is important]," Cox said.
"One thing we wanted to make sure that we did is, no matter who we play or where we play; how do we help each other out as often as we possibly can? We went away from that.
"To West Coast's credit, their pressure, they ramped it right up. We, at times, over handballed, didn't play a really predictable game when the heat came on. To our credit, certainly in the second half, we played the way we wanted to play."
Sydney will hope they've built momentum into 2026 after finishing the last 11 games of the season with an 8-3 record, though Cox believes there is plenty of work to be done if they are to find themselves back in premiership contention.
"It gives the players belief that what we are trying to do can stand up and work," Cox said of the second half of the season.
"Now it's about getting back to work. Have your break, no problem, but there'll be some high expectations when they come back, and all of us need to improve."
